


In Sickness

by AdorableDoom



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode V: Empire Strikes Back
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, F/M, Fluff, Pre-Relationship, Rebelcaptain - Freeform, Sickfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-04
Updated: 2017-09-04
Packaged: 2018-12-23 18:05:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11995140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AdorableDoom/pseuds/AdorableDoom
Summary: "You're sick.""I'm not sick."Jyn might have believed him if he wasn't leaning on the doorway like it was the only thing holding him upright.





	In Sickness

    Cassian is punctual. Almost chronically so. She could and had set her chrono by him. So when he doesn't show up to meet her outside the mess hall Jyn goes looking for him. It takes several increasingly loud knocks on the door before it slides open.  
    "You're sick,” she said as soon as the door slid open.  
    "I'm not sick,” Cassian protested.  
     Jyn might have believed him if he wasn't leaning on the doorway like it was the only thing holding him upright. Which, by the look of him, it probably was. There wasn't an ounce of color left in Cassian's face which was flushed with sickness, his dark eyes overly bright and dazed. Jyn reached out and laid her hand on Cassian's forehead more on impulse than anything else. Although obviously startled by this, Cassian doesn't pull away though he watched her in something like puzzlement.  
    His skin is wet with sweat and burning like a person consumed in flames. "You're burning up," Jyn said, smoothing the sweat soaked hair back from Cassian's forehead. Cassian leaned almost unconsciously into the touch, pressing his burning cheek against the palm of her hand. "I'm fine," Cassian insisted with less conviction this time. Jyn rolled her eyes.  
    "Yeah, you look like a warmed over corpse but I'm sure you're in perfect health," she said. Cassian didn't respond to that, a testament to how sick he was. Her hand was still on his burning cheek. She smoothed her thumb gently beneath his eye. "Go back to bed," she said gently.  
     Cassian shook his head, eyes actually drifting shut. "We have debrief," he said half heartedly. Jyn dropped her hand from Cassian's cheek and stepped forward into his space, hooking her arm around his slim waist. Jyn winced as his burning body pressed up against hers, smoothing her hand comfortingly over side. (He's thin, she thinks, too thin from hunger and hard living. A life she knew intimately.) He's radiating heat like an overheating hyperdrive.  
     Cassian practically sank into her but was ever mindful of her slight weight, draping a hesitant arm around her shoulders. He didn't protest as she steered him back into his quarters, letting the door hiss shut behind them. Although they'd been at Echo Base for several standard months now, Cassian's quarters were as bare as her own. A spare pair of boots beneath a neatly made bunk and a storage cube were the only things occupying the closet sized room. No knickknacks or personal touches. It could have easily been her own quarters.  
     She tries not to think about what that says about either of them. Jyn helped Cassian out of the parka he'd put on to make the long and very cold journey to the debriefing room across the base and hung it on the hook by the door, surprised he let her do so. Jyn hesitated for only a moment before hanging up her own coat beside his. She guided Cassian the short distance to his bunk where he dropped like he'd been hit by blaster fire, curling on his side and seeming to drop off to sleep. "Where do you keep your medkit?" Jyn asked.  
     Cassian gestured vaguely towards the storage cube at the end of his bunk. Jyn knelt on the cold floor and popped it open, smiling faintly at the neatly folded and neatly stacked clothes. They were threadbare and worn soft beneath her hands as dug carefully through his few possessions in search of the small kit the Alliance had issued its soldiers. She found it at the very bottom of the cube beside a spare blaster. Jyn wondered if it was a replacement for the one she'd stolen from him when they first met.  
     The one currently hanging against her hip. Jyn straighten and sat on the edge of Cassian's bunk near his head with the kit on her lap. It's a small kit. A few tubes of bacta, a roll of gauze bandages, and a few pain patches. Jyn has a vague memory of being sick as a child on Lah'mu.  
     She remembered her mother's cool hands on her burning head, chasing away the pain she stroked Jyn's perpetually tangled hair and caressed her cheek. Jyn thought of soft lullabies whose words she no longer remembered and warm tea. The memories come easier to her now but that didn't mean they hurt any less. Jyn can't give Cassian these things, no matter how much she'd like to. The best she can give him is a few tablets for his fever which she presses into his burning hand and he takes dry without even opening his eyes and a spare blanket which she pulls from the storage cube and covers him with.  
     He huddled beneath the blanket, trembling faintly. She should go. At least one of them should be at the debrief. Jyn should go, get the details so she can relay them when he's well. It's just a cold, half the base had one because of the damn miserable ice rock they'd settled on.  
     He'll be all right.  
     She should go.  
     Jyn looked at Cassian once more, curled up beneath the blanket and trembling with sickness. Jyn should go. She doesn't. Can't. Won't.  
     Because Jyn has another memory. She remembered being 17, alone and sick, sleeping on the floor of a flophouse on a planet she barely remember, burning with fever and wondering if she was going to die there. And if there was anyone left who would even care if she did. Jyn laid a hand on his arm and rubbed gently. Cassian stirred faintly, looking up at Jyn, eyes glazed with fever and soft with something she might call affection.  
     She chalked it up to the fever. Until Cassian shifted a little, actually curling a little closer to Jyn and lying his hot head on her thigh. Jyn froze, heart hammering against her ribs. He's sick, she tells herself, it's just because he's sick. It doesn't mean anything.  
      He's her friend, he's her best friend. That's all. Not no matter how much she might want. . . Jyn laid a hand on his head, carding her fingers through his sweat dampened hair. "I think I'm sick," Cassian murmured. Jyn bit back a laugh but just barely. "Maybe," she smiled though he couldn't see her.  
      She stroked her fingers through his hair. It was thick and silken soft against her fingers. "Can you stay awhile?" Cassian asked suddenly, voice soft and half asleep. She remembered being curled up in some miserable dark place; sick and alone. And she knew he did too.  
Jyn let her fingers drift from his hair to his face, stroking his stubbled cheek. "Yeah," she promised. The relief that washed over him was instant and palatable. Cassian reached up and linked his fingers, calloused and scarred not unlike Jyn's own with hers, holding their joined hands against his heart. "Thank you," Cassian murmured softly but gratefully.  
     Jyn smiled softly at him, leaning back against the frigid wall while taking care not to dislodge Cassian and settled in. Jyn gave his fingers a gentle squeeze. He wasn't alone now. And neither was she. 


End file.
